Overgrazing by native and introduced herbivores and predation by introduced cats and foxes are major contributors to mammal decline and extinction in arid Australia. Fenced conservation safehavens exclude these threats but exacerbate the issue of prey naivety and can lead to overabundance of reintroduced species. At the Wild Deserts site in Sturt National Park NSW, we used a different approach. This aims to allow animals to gradually transition from fenced safehavens, where predators and competitive herbivores are completely excluded, to a 10,000ha ‘Wild Training Zone’ surrounded by a leaky fence where animals are exposed to low densities of these threats. This low-level exposure has been shown to lead to advantageous changes in physical and behavioural traits in reintroduced mammals in previous experiments. Maintaining low levels of feral cats, foxes and native herbivores such as kangaroos in the large Wild Training Zone is challenging in a dynamic boom-bust desert climate. We outline a variety of methods used including one-way gates, felixer grooming traps, and baiting to limit feral cats, foxes and kangaroos to predetermined population thresholds. Over 36-months, one-way gates facilitated the exit of 227 kangaroos from the training zone, maintaining the target density of >2 kangaroo/km2 (1% of mean control density). During a 12-month trial Felixer grooming traps fired at 103 cats, limiting cat activity to 20% of the control treatment outside; a step in facilitating planned releases of bilbies, quolls and boodies into the training zone. Restoring native Australian mammals outside fences requires experimental approaches and adaptive solutions.